The Waitress Disassembling
by MollyBananahammock
Summary: Penny struggles after her break-up with Leonard. Post season 3 break-up. One shot.


A/N: Theres been a whole lot of fluffy stuff about lately so heres a bit of angst just to shake things up! This came about from a mild obsession with She Used to be Mine by Sara Bareilles. I'd recommend giving it a listen but if not enjoy the fic anyway!

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The Cheesecake Factory was quiet, the lunch-time rush not yet upon them as Penny tied her green apron over blue skirt. There was too much colour in these uniforms, she decided. Green and yellow and blue, it was an assault on the eyes. Someone should complain about it. Maybe she would.

She was cranky this morning, still nursing a slight hangover and in nowhere near the right condition to have to look at and serve food. Clearing up was the worst part, sometimes just seeing the mess some people left on their plates, gravy mixed with ketchup mixed with mayo and who knows what else, made her physically gag.

Most of the time Penny hated being a waitress. She hadn't always. In the beginning, when she had first started here, she had been quite optimistic about the whole thing. She wasn't going to be there for long, after all! Her big break wouldn't be long in coming, but months passed and she was still there, and then years passed and still her main occupation was being a waitress and slowly but surely she begun to loathe it.

Like everyone who hated their job though, she was good at faking it - and so she should be given that her goal in life was to become an actress. Each day that she stepped ruefully into that uniform Penny treated it like it were a recurring part in a TV show. The part of Happy-Go-Lucky Waitress that often got your order wrong but was kind and funny and quite pretty so you didn't really mind.

Sometimes it wasn't even hard to do, sometimes the customers were quite nice and sometimes she had such a good laugh with the other staff that she didn't mind being there and sometimes a group of four oddballs would come in and, although she'd try to hide and deny it, she'd be beaming.

It wasn't like that lately, though. Lately it was harder, much harder, to play that Happy-Go-Lucky Waitress. It seemed as though everyone she worked with was extra annoying or bitchy and all the customers had something to complain about (usually her service) and those nerdy customers that used to show up, arguing over some tiny detail in some comic book or some film, no longer did.

Nothing was the same anymore, and it was all her fault.

Losing Leonard – not that she had any right to call it that. You can't say you lost something if you were the one to throw it away - felt like a great weight on her shoulders. A weight made heavier from living across the hall from him. Leaving the apartment was never easy like it used to be. Before, she'd bounce out the door and secretly hope to bump into him, now she listened carefully and checked the peep hole before stepping out, just to make sure he wasn't there, and then scurry downstairs as fast as she could in case he came out behind her.

Not being with him was unlike any other break-up she'd had. Anger had been the prevailing emotion before, anger followed by sadness. Because in every other big break-up she'd experienced, his lack of being able to keep his dick in his pants had been the reason for it. With those break-ups she'd been betrayed and she was pissed about it, so she threw things and she yelled and she angry-cried and she threw more things, and after all of that she got a bit sad, she started to feel stupid, and wonder how she could have let this happen again and what on earth was it about her that made men think it was okay to cheat on her? Why did she continue to give her heart to men that didn't really want her?

But Leonard hadn't done that. Hadn't done anything, really, so there was nothing to be angry at. Nothing was broken but her. She didn't yell, and she didn't angry-cry, she just cried. The only person she could think to be angry at was herself and as punishment she drunk herself into oblivion whenever she felt necessary to try and block it all out. The thing with that was that no matter how much alcohol she had it never went away, and she usually ended up hating herself anyway. But she kept on trying.

At first, she hadn't really known what to do with herself. She had taken for granted just how much that gang, and especially Leonard, had intertwined their way into her life, that now she struggled to think what she used to do with her evenings when she wasn't going over to theirs for takeout or getting caught up in whatever it was they'd gotten themselves into that week. There was always something and now there was nothing.

No sweet messages left her on her phone or slipped through her door, no one to fall asleep next to or to wake up with, no one to tell stories of her day to, no one to just do nothing with. He was always there, and now he wasn't and it was all her fault.

It was incredibly lonely at home, she always felt lonely now, and that's why, despite her dislike of her job and most of the customers she met there, she actually didn't mind being there anymore. It was the only place where the loneliness faded. Where she could become just distracted enough by the annoying customers, by hearing the gossip her colleagues had (it's amazing how much better you can feel by listening to how dramatically someone else's life is also falling apart), and just by knowing that she wasn't about to bump into any of them and have to navigate her way through some awkward conversation.

Being at work was now the preferred state. Being at work or being drunk (and on some Sunday mornings, both). The Cheesecake Factory, the place she had once despised, had become her solace, but she no longer tried to pretend she was happy there. She had gone from hating being at her job but being good at faking it, to being okay with being there but unable to put a mask over the broken person she now was. Real-life had become too tiring to find any extra energy to fake a happiness she once felt. Because maybe the saddest truth of it all was that for the best part of the last year she had truly been that Happy-Go-Lucky Waitress. She hadn't needed to act. She'd come into work with a bounce in her step and the type of smile on her face that just couldn't be faked. Happiness had consumed her and oozed out of her so much that even the things she hated doing she had done with a near jovial manner.

Mundane things like doing the laundry. When she would pick through her basket of dirty clothes she might come across one of his socks, just one, one that Leonard had thrown off and must have landed in there because she would have insisted the night before that he not wear socks while they were having sex, and she'd be overcome with the memory of it, of the hot weight of his body above her, of his struggle to reach down and pull the stupid things off under the covers before eventually resuming what they were doing. Or she might be folding one of her tops and notice a slight tear in the fabric usually somewhere along the neckline or shoulder strap and remember the passion behind it. Leonard's soft lips kissing along her chest, urging her top down to expose more of her skin as she clung to him. Fingers in his hair, leg wrapped around his waist.

Those little things made the boring stuff fun.

Penny missed that girl she was. That fun and carefree girl who was a bit messy and might eat your food and use your Wi-Fi but you didn't really mind because she was sweet and caring and loving and fun to be around. Penny missed the ease of being her. Missed the security of knowing there was someone who would be more than happy, delighted even, at simply receiving a call from her. She missed being able to spring across the hall, open the door without knocking and know there would be at least one person behind that door that was glad to see her.

Now, she had to think about everything. Now, it felt like an intrusion to walk through their door without knocking and announcing it was her first. Sheldon thought it was great, obviously. "Happy to see you've finally learned some manners, Penny," he'd tell her with a satisfied look, and Penny would realise just how much she hated this new person she had to be. The person who felt she no longer had the right to go over there and talk with him and his friends like nothing had happened. It felt weird being over there now, without being able to throw Leonard a sideways look at whatever stupid thing Sheldon or Howard or Raj had said, or ridicule him over something stupid _he_ had said. It was odd not being able to sit on the arm of his chair and rest her arm on his shoulder. Not being able to touch his hand or fix his hair or kiss him as she left, hung like the weight of an elephant in the room and she could tell it affected Leonard in the same way; he'd lost something about him too.

They were walking on eggshells, forcing those things that had once come so natural to them to stop.

It was easier to just stay away. Apartment 4a held far too many memories, anyway. Memories that would call out to her each time she walked in. She couldn't stand in the kitchen without remembering all the mornings she'd made French toast in Leonard's shirt in there, couldn't sit on the sofa without being reminded that that was the place they'd shared their first kiss and many, many, many more since. Each corner of the room held a memory of something. A memory of arguments, of laughter, of tickle fights, of movie marathons, of stupid video games he'd made her play, and of sex. So much sex. Sheldon would kill them if he knew just how many parts of that apartment had had at least one of their naked asses on it at some point.

It was so torturous to be reminded of that each time she went there that when she left she would feel instantly lighter. Like the whole time she'd been in there she'd been tense and barely breathing. A place that had once felt like her second home now felt awkward and unwelcome. She wondered if she'd ever feel comfortable there again. Wondered too if she really deserved to.

So she didn't go over very often anymore. Everything was easier that way. Being around him only served to further torment her over all she had lost. All that she had thrown away. It wasn't good for either of them for her to keep it up. At some point, if they ever stood a chance of being friends again – something she greatly hoped – they both needed space to get over what had happened.

Penny was broken and she had to find a way to fix herself. She had to figure out why she sabotaged the most stable relationship she had ever been in. For once she had found a man that cherished each day spent with her, she found a thoughtful, caring, smart and handsome man that loved her, and she had thrown that away because of what? Fear? Panic? A sense that this was all too much too soon and she wasn't ready for it?

The question of why this happened was too great to think about yet so she didn't. She drowned her sorrows in wine and came to work and pretended things were okay.

And then, out of nowhere, a gang of four came bustling through the door. Sheldon, Howard and Raj talking amongst themselves while a rather tentative looking Leonard hung back quietly. At first, Penny's stomach sunk and her heart lurched because this was the first time they'd come in since the break-up and she didn't want to have to do this. Not today. It was too hard. Bernadette wasn't even here to take over the table for her. She was the only waitress on the floor and it was quiet, she would have to serve them.

They sat down at their usual table, like it had been days since they'd last been here and not weeks, and Penny came over and handed them the menus.

"Hey, guys." She said as chirpily as she could manage, unable to stop her gaze fixing on Leonard while the rest of them said hello back.

"Hi," he said to her, with a small smile and a look that told her they had probably brought him there against his will and she smiled back, hoping it would put him at ease even though she felt anything but.

"The usual?" She asked, notepad and pen in hand and after some pointless perusing of the menus, they all agreed that yes, they would have exactly what they always have.

It wasn't so bad in the end. A slice of normality had returned to the world she'd flipped upside down. The awkwardness faded, a few more smiles were shared between them and all of a sudden Penny felt like something might be able to be salvaged from this mess.

Leonard was still only across the hall; he would still welcome her phone calls and they would still ridicule Sheldon together. Not just yet, but eventually they would, she could feel it.

With time, this broken person she is would turn back into that girl she was before, the girl she used to be. In time she would stop avoiding him and stop drinking herself to sleep, she'd stop lounging around feeling sorry for herself; start hating being at The Cheesecake Factory again and start going to auditions more and, in time, she'd be able to go across the hall and sit with her friends and not feel that pit in her stomach. That void that told her she wasn't welcome.

It was only a matter of time. This wasn't the end for them.

It couldn't be.


End file.
